Development

From DD-WRT Wiki

Most of the time you don't really need to re-build DD-WRT to make your desired changes. Now, this process has been made easy with the Firmware Modification Kit. This kit gives the user the ability to make changes to a firmware image without recompiling the firmware sources. It works by extracting the firmware into its component parts, then extracting the squashfs-lzma based file system (other file systems can be supported with tweaks). The user can then make modifications to the extracted file system, then rebuild the firmware image.

Features include:

add initialization scripts

install new packages (remember, packages pre-installed are compressed much better)

extend web UI

remove un-needed packages

mix-and-match packages from various DD-WRT variants

WARNING: Due to abuse by those re-branding DD-WRT and selling it, or pre-flashed routers with it on eBay, builds dated later than 08/04/2006 have some protections against re-branding the web UI.

I've worked hard to make sure the requirements are low enough for anyone to use this kit. However, to reduce distribution costs and better represent the multi-platform capabilities of this kit, the binary tools in the kit do automatically build themselves the first time you run one of the scripts. Any machine set up to build anything C or C++ on the machine will probably be ready. The few requirements are all basic items that everyone has easy access to:

A compatible platform. The following are specifically supported (or specifically unsupported):

LINUX

OS X

CYGWIN **alpha stage testing (!! built firmwares may not boot !!)**

GNU C (gcc)

GNU C++ (g++)

Standard C runtime library development

Standard C++ runtime library development

GNU make

TAR and GZIP (optional, used by ipkg_install.sh)

For OS X, installing the Mac OS X Developer Tools will supply the needed GNU C and C++ compilers and make utility.

To install/update most of them at once on a x32 Debian based distribution (I.E. Debian Lenny, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc), issue this command in a terminal:

Any cybertan style firmware image format that uses squashfs-lzma as a root file system should work fine. Firmware that uses regular squashfs or other file systems (i.e. cramfs) will work if the steps that extract the file system and rebuild the file system are tweaked. As is, it is compatible with the following:

Firmware

Notes

DD-WRT

OpenWrt

probably not at the moment - should require older mksquashfs if using White Russian

FreeWrt

untested

Sveasoft Alchemy/Talismen

untested

HyperWrt

untested

I may extend default support to cramfs, regular squashfs, and older squashfs and squashfs-lzma versions if there is sufficient demand. Note that for firmwares that do have an easy to use build system and/or an image builder utility, i.e. OpenWrt, this kit is of less use.

Simply run extract_firmware.sh with the following parameters. You must run this tool from inside the directory it exists in.

$ ./extract_firmware.sh firmware.bin working_directory/

firmware.bin

the firmware image you want to extract, i.e. DD-WRT.v23_MICRO_GENERIC.BIN.

working_directory

the working directory you want to use. This is where the intermediate files and the extracted file system will be stored. Note that files in the working directory may be deleted!

It doesn't matter which firmware image you supply, i.e. for a WRT54G or an ASUS WL-500G. These images are usually all the same and differ only in the header format. The rebuilding process will create images for the various models.

Modifying the firmware is simple. The file system is stored in the working directory you supplied to extract_firmware.sh. Here are the subfolders of this directory:

rootfs/

This is where the file system is. Make modifications here.

image_parts/

This is where intermediate files are stored. If you need to replace the kernel (not at all recommended), you can do so by replacing vmlinuz here.

One merely changes, adds, or removes files in rootfs/ to make changes to the firmware's file system. After you're done making changes, rebuild the firmware.
Installing packages (.IPK)
Packages are pre-built collections of files pertaining to a set of software. OpenWrt and DD-WRT both use packages, and most are cross-compatible. These packages are stored in a tar/gzip archive of a pre-defined structure that includes some control files. You can extract and copy the files manually, or use the ipkg_install.sh script included with this kit. For a list of some of the available packages (not all may work), see http://downloads.openwrt.org/backports/0.9/ .
Example use:

$ ./ipkg_install.sh some_package-1.2.5.ipk working_directory/

some_package-1.2.5.ipkg

would be the filename of the package.

working_directory

is the same working directory you supplied to the extract_firmware.sh script.

Rebuilding the firmware is as easy as extracting it. Use the build_firmware.sh script to automate the process. You must run this tool from inside the directory it exists in.
Example use:

$ ./build_firmware.sh output_directory/ working_directory/

output_directory

the path to which the created firmware images should be stored. If images already exist here, they will be over-written. Firmware images for various models will be emitted (these images are all the same but have different header patterns so they are accepted by the target models).

[edit]Building on Debian Unstable using DD-WRT V24 - Work in progress [~matrix]

Building DD-WRT from source is difficult and according to the text here definitly not working on first try. You will see lots of strange errors and many confusing install-scripts. The forum is full of people who were not able to make this install-procedure running through. The infos in the forum is much newer than these here, but also very confusing and mixed up.

Brainslayer does not have the time to do everything. Until the day comes that DD-WRT will build without any extra steps, I've written some scripts that will set up a build environment for DD-WRT. Newer builds of DD-WRT may break compatibility with these scripts. If this happens and I don't update them, please take the time to update them if you are sure your changes are appropriate.

First you'll need to get subversion, available at https://subversion.apache.org/
For some Linux distributions, you should be able to get subversion using the package manager tool.

After installing, you can get the latest source from DD-WRT by running the following command:

svn co svn://svn.dd-wrt.com/DD-WRT

You can also visit the github mirror of dd-wrt for alternate download options (This is a just a mirror, pull requests on github will not be merged. Please report bugs to http://svn.dd-wrt.com/report instead of opening GitHub issues)

You'll need the 3.4.6 and 4.1.0 mipsl uclibc toolchains. They are available at [[1]] for x86 users. There is also a ppc version in the download section at [[2]] The mips-uclibc 3.4.6 toolchain is used for building the kernel and the 4.1.0 mipsel-uclibc toolchain is used for building the user-mode packages. Unpack the toolchains wherever you desire, the scripts below will set up symlinks appropriately.

These two scripts should be saved to ready_ddwrt.sh and ready_ddwrt_root.sh. You can download them [here] HOWEVER ready_ddwrt.sh is missing the last two sections to build write4 and webcomp, so you are probably best off just copying that script from this page.

NOTE: $DDROOT/src/linux/brcm may not exist on your file structure (it didn't on mine) so to fix the scripts below make a new sub-directory $DDROOT/src/linux/brcm and then move your $DDROOT/src/linux/linux.v2* folders to $DDROOT/src/linux/brcm or simply change the script below.

NOTE: If you are having issues with the first ready_ddwrt.sh script building mksquashfs-lzma and it's giving you some error about "ld: skipping incompatible ./lzma/C/7zip/Compress/LZMA_Lib/liblzma.a when searching for -llzma", then this is likely the result of the CPU tuning done in the CFLAGS in the makefiles. I had to edit src/squashfs-tools/Makefile and src/squashfs-tools/lzma/C/7zip/Compress/LZMA_Lib/makefile removing the following optimizations:

-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64

-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE

-mtune=opteron

-march=opteron

-mfpmath=sse

-m3dnow

-msse2

-m64

-mmmx

-msse3

I kept the "-funroll-loops" and "-O3" optimizations since those should be non-CPU-specific. By all mean leave any optimizations that apply to your CPU. For a 64-bit CPU, leave -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64, -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE, and -m64. If you're curious as to what your cpu has, look at the flags listed in /proc/cpuinfo.

Work in progress
DD-WRT is easily reconfigured. In the /src/router folder you'll find .config* files for each type of distribution. Use 'make menuconfig' to edit the appropriate configuration files. The /src/router/busybox folder contains .config* files for its configuration. Just edit them in a similar way.

Change micro configuration:
WARNING: Before and after doing this you need to copy and restore the "Internal Options" section of the .config files. These options don't seem to be in #the Config template.

I have tested this on an Eko big build (2.6.23 or .24 kernel) for an Asus RT-N16. YMMV but I know this should work with minor modifications on other kernel versions.

If you want to build a custom kernel module (eg. to include drivers that are not in the suggested release for your router) you don't necessarily need to recompile all of DD-WRT. The kernel allows for modules to be loaded (manually) in runtime. You can find a list of pre-compiled modules on your router at /lib/modules/`uname -r`/drivers

If your kernel is 2.4 (check with uname -a), there are some kernel modules in ipkg and ipkg-opt.

See first these pre-requisites for more information on the tools you require before you begin. You'll need to execute the apt-get command to get your build tools as well as get your mipsel toolchain (4.1.0).

I recommend you have at least some knowledge or experience about the Linux kernel and/or how to build it from scratch before you start. You should also either have some jffs space or another form of (internal or external) media to save your modules and custom scripts once you built them. See also here

You should have a Linux or Unix-like environment (x86 or PPC). I recommend using a small Ubuntu install in VirtualBox or VMWare if you want the least problems. The disk where you store your workfiles needs to have at least a few 100MB and the filesystem needs to be case-sensitive (or you'll get errors during svn).

Download the kernel sources for the kernel running. Some/most modules will run on one or more additional minor releases of the same kernel. Eg. some modules compiled for .23 will run on .24. Kernel modules compiled for major versions (2.4 vs 2.6) will not interchange, minor versions too far apart will likely fail also.

eg.:

svn co svn://svn.dd-wrt.com/DD-WRT/src/linux/brcm/linux-2.6.23

(you can probably use the original kernel sources from kernel.org too)

Let me explain, .config_std comes from the dd-wrt svn and is a default .config for the MIPS BroadCom chipset and has a few defaults already set up to compile the kernel. I strongly suggest you use it and change that config for your needs.

If it complains about madwifi either get the madwifi drivers into place or take it out of the Kconfig script file on the line that is complaining (unless you really need the madwifi drivers in your modules).

Once that is done you can do:

make modules

Sit back and relax, get a cup of coffee or take a shower, all types of modules are being built for you. You have to keep track of where your modules are getting build though (this is where your prerequisite experience with the Linux kernel comes in). Eg, I built the Keyspan modules for a Keyspan USB-to-Serial module and those are in drivers/usb/serial

You do not need to do anything else. Definitely do not do make modules_install or make vmlinuz or use any type of make or script that will "install" the kernel as this will do something on your local computer (or vmware image) and possibly overwrite or corrupt your Linux boot (you can recover it but that's not in this scope).

Now go and find those kernel modules (.ko files). Mine was drivers/usb/serial/keyspan.ko, copy them (only the .ko files, we're not interested in the source) to your router using scp or so. Login on the router and do:

insmod /jffs/keyspan.ko
lsmod
ls /dev/usb

And if all went well you should see the modules in lsmod output and a USB device (or wherever it is for you) in /dev/usb